2011
How to get people to Join Your Mailing List
Many businesses struggle with creating good email marketing lists. Many other businesses feel just a little bit guilty when they click the box in their email marketing service, indicating that the contacts have all willingly signed up. So how do you get people to sign up so you can rid yourself of the guilt?
The first step is to design your website in a way that makes it easy for visitors to sign up. Why hide the “Join our Mailing List” at the bottom corner of the site? It also doesn’t help to have it only on the main page.
Give people a reason to join. People don’t generally sign up for “Junk Mail” unless they see a benefit. They may not want to sign up if they believe they’ll be getting “whats new this week” emails, but they might sign up if they know thats how you’ll be sending them special offers or useful information.
Ask them. It’s amazing how many more people do something when you ask them. I’m not endorsing multiple popups to drive teh question home, but if you’re making it a goal to increase the size of your Opt-in mailing list, then design your site in such a way that it prompts the question. A button at the bottom of your index page isn’t likely to result in thousands of people joining. A well placed question, whether on a product page or after a transaction, if executed well, can produce more email addresses than you might imagine.